whatsoever.
And they were right.
He would not betray their trust.
He kept hearing helicopters from time to time. Probably the National Guard out plucking people from wreckage and rooftops. He hoped they’d come for them soon. For it would be dark in less than two hours.
Christ, he hoped they’d hurry.
“Harry?” Rita Zirblanski said. “Are we going to be all right?”
He went over there, put an arm around her. “Of course we’re going to be all right. I wouldn’t have it any other way, honey.”
Wanda looked over at him and winked.
Mr. Cheese, Deke’s cat, meowed.
Chuck Bittner just nodded. “Don’t worry, girls, they won’t show up…unless they want to die again.”
23
“Those look like bodies,” Deke said in a very nervous voice.
“Goddamn, I think you’re right,” Tommy said. “Give the man a big cigar.”
“I’m just saying is all,” Deke said, water running down his face.
Ahead, there were lots of things floating. Pieces of wood and siding, a Rubbermaid bin and a garbage can lid, the wishing well from somebody’s front yard. Lots of unknown rubbish coated in yellow leaves and, yes, bodies. About a dozen of them caught in some kind of crazy daisy-chain like paper dolls. Only these dolls were swollen with gas and gray as rainy concrete. Some kind of weird magnetism had welded them together and maybe it was just decomposition.
Mitch had his Remington Auto-loader balanced across his knees, the bag of salt held on the seat between his legs. Sure, those looked like just your average dead bodies, waterlogged and bloated up, a veil of flies over them… but you could never tell in Witcham these days, you just couldn’t tell.
Deke and Tommy were rowing with slats of wood that had drifted by. Mitch was in the bow. They were making progress, but this was not a good development. In order to keep going, they’d have to try and row around the corpses or cut right through them.
Mitch knew it was his call.
He wrinkled his nose against the stink, said, “Keep rowing, we’ll just have to slice our way through.”
“Through…through that?” Deke said.
“You heard the man,” Tommy said. “Jesus Christ.”
For some reason, Tommy had been at Deke ever since they hopped into the rowboat. He didn’t even know the kid…yet he had taken a dislike to him or maybe it was just that he had had enough and he needed someone to strike out at.
Deke licked his lips. “I was just thinking maybe we should go around. The way the dead are these days, you know.”
“Nobody told you to think,” Tommy said.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Deke said.
Tommy scowled. “You mouth off to me again, punk, and you go overboard.”
“Go ahead, you think you’re up to it.”
“All right,” Mitch said. “Take it easy, the both of you.”
This was the last thing he needed. Tommy just couldn’t stop picking at the kid. Maybe it was his shaven head or the red braided King Tut beard he wore. But that was fashion, that was window-trimming, inside, Deke was okay. Mitch knew that or he wouldn’t be with Chrissy. Tommy couldn’t stop, though. He was acting like some redneck who found himself a hippie to torment. It was not like Tommy. He might have been a lot of things, but he wasn’t some intolerant redneck.
“Listen, Mr. Barron,” Deke said. “I just came to help. I know this guy is your friend, but this is getting old, man.”
“You’re right, it is,” Mitch said.
Tommy looked like he’d been slapped. “Christ, Mitch, you’re siding with this fucking punk against me?”
“I’m not siding with anyone.”
But Tommy didn’t seem to believe that. “Lookit this guy, Mitch! Fucking head shaved like one of faggot gangbangers, that silly-ass beard…damn. You think he’s up to what we have to do? What might be waiting for us? He’s wet behind the ears. He don’t have the balls for this.”
“I think he does.”
“I do,” Deke said. “You think I haven’t seen the same shit you have, dude? You think you’re the only one whose seen dead people walking around or had them try to kill you? Well, guess again. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. I know it. So don’t you judge me, because you don’t know shit.”
Tommy looked like he was ready to swing.
Just great.
Out in a rowboat in a flooded city full of dead people that wanted nothing better than to yank out your guts and eat them raw and they were going to fight. Oh, it was about as ludicrous as ludicrous got. Tommy was an old toughie; no doubt about that. He knew how to handle himself, he had the experience. But Deke had fifty pounds on him, muscle and stamina. He played football, was a defensive tackle, and had a black belt in karate. The odds didn’t sound too good and what sounded even worse, in Mitch’s opinion, was that if they started any of that happy horseshit, the boat would tip and back into the water they’d all go.
“So are you our resident zombie-killer?” Tommy said. “Is that what you’re selling, kid?”
“I’m not selling anything, you fucking hayseed. I’ve seen shit you couldn’t handle.”
Tommy laughed, swatting flies away from his face. “No shit? This I gotta hear.”
“Knock it off,” Mitch said to the both of them. “I won’t have it. I won’t have any of this. Both of you, act your fucking ages or I’ll throw both of you overboard. You hearing me on this?”
They both fell silent, so he figured they got it, all right.
Mitch didn’t have time for it. None of it. Lily was dead and maybe Chrissy, too, and he wasn’t going on much here, his batteries were dry and his heart was split wide open and bleeding, and he did not have time for anything that did not get them to that fucking orphanage.
“Row,” he told them. “Row.”
They did.
The boat surged forward through that oily, leaf-congested water and the bow sliced right into those bodies and the stink was instantaneous and sickening, enough to make you vomit your stomach out. A week ago, Mitch would have done just that. But now…well, he was almost used to it and wasn’t that a horrible thing to realize? That you could really get used to something like that?
Deke was gagging.
Tommy was, too, but he was holding it in. “Just don’t puke on me,” he said.
“If I did,” Deke gasped, “it would be purely out of respect.”
Tommy stared at him and burst out laughing. Then Mitch followed suit and Deke, too, letting out a blast of air. It was insane. Insane that anything could be funny in such a situation, yet it was. And maybe the laughter was a necessary thing. Maybe they needed it. Needed to let out some steam.
But the humor died pretty quickly.
As the boat nosed through the daisy-chain, Deke said, “That one…that one just moved.”
And Mitch was going to say, sure, we’re knocking ‘em aside, son…but this was something else. The bodies were all moving. They were gyrating, trembling, then thrashing. It looked like maybe they were all going to wake up, but that wasn’t it at all. For the bodies were just camouflage of a sort for what lived beneath them.
Children.
Six of seven them, boys and girls, white and pulpy, their faces the color of newly-risen moons. They slid out of the water, scrambling atop their corpse-floats. Their eyes were black and translucent, windows looking into some
